Khadija Ismayilova works with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and hosts a daily current affairs show on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Azerbaijan. She started out as a translator at the offices of a newspaper in Baku, but gradually traded her job for one as a reporter. Now she hosts a weekly program on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Azerbaijani service, where she reports on corruption and malfeasance in the country’s government and the unethical business dealings of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s family. In 2008, the national government banned all international stations from broadcasting on local frequencies. RFE/RL now disseminates its programming, including Khadija’s show, through satellite and the Internet.

Khadija received international attention when she was blackmailed and publicly defamed in the spring of 2012. Almost exactly seven years before, in 2005, investigative journalist Elmar Huseynov had been murdered in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. Khadija says, "They killed him at his doorstep. And the first thing I thought when I heard was It’s my responsibility too. It’s my fault as well, because he was doing it alone."

In 2012 she received both the Zeit Foundation award and the International Women’s Media Federation’s Courage Award.